On 27 June 1989, two days after winning the EuroBasket 1989 championship with Yugoslavia and making the All-Tournament Team, the 22-year-old center got drafted by the Boston Celtics in the second round as the 40th pick.

[1] Right away, he publicly expressed willingness to immediately go to Boston "if the financial offer is good",[2] and thus join fellow Yugoslavs Vlade Divac, Dražen Petrović, and Žarko Paspalj, who were also on their way to the NBA that summer.

The club's head coach, Božidar Maljković, even publicly called on the Yugoslav Basketball Association (KSJ) to adopt safeguard policies, preventing players younger than age 26 from transferring to NBA teams.

[3] After weeks of wrangling over his status, Rađa tried to force Jugoplastika's hand by travelling to the U.S. and, on 1 August 1989, unilaterally signing a one-year contract with the Celtics,[4] reportedly worth in the neighborhood of US$500,000.

Following a hearing on 26 September 1989, Judge Douglas Woodlock ruled in Jugoplastika's favor two days later thus preventing Rađa from staying with the Celtics.

[7] The deal centered around the Celtics paying an undisclosed sum of money to Jugoplastika, which in turn agreed to let Rađa go two years short of his contract's completion.

Despite the team's success, as previously agreed, Rađa would not stay in Split past June 1990 thus relinquishing the chance to go for the historic FIBA European Champions Cup three-peat (which the club, led by Kukoč, achieved the following year), but he would not go to Boston either.

In August 1990, instead of going to the NBA as previously agreed, Rađa ended up in Italy, signing with the wealthy Virtus Roma despite claiming all along that he had wanted to join the Celtics.

[9] He had a change of heart once Virtus, an ambitious and financially stable club bankrolled by the Gruppo Ferruzzi [it] food company and sponsored by the Il Messaggero daily broadsheet, made him an offer reportedly in the US$15–18 million range for a 5-year contract.

[12] The Boston Celtics did not insist on Rađa honouring his commitment to them, instead letting the twenty-three-year-old go to Virtus in return for an undisclosed amount,[13] but retaining his NBA rights.

[10] Simultaneous to the legal battle his agent was waging over the future of his club career, Rađa had been spending the summer of 1990 with the Yugoslav national team in a four-month 1990 FIBA World Championship training camp that included an appearance at the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle where the 23-year-old suffered a leg fracture in the final game against the U.S. national team, ruling him out of the World Championship that started a week later.

[16]Rađa averaged 17.9 points in the Italian League[17] in his first season with Il Messaggero (Virtus Roma enjoyed sponsorship from that popular Roman newspaper at the time).

Playing alongside Dee Brown, 40-year-old veteran Robert Parish, and Rick Fox, twenty-six-year-old Rađa averaged 15.1 points and 7.2 rebounds in his debut season during which he made $1.5 million in salary.

With his agent Mark Fleisher engaged in long negotiations[20] with the Celtics brass led by GM Jan Volk, the deal was reached to add three more years to Rađa's existing contract beginning with the 1996–97 season.

Rađa had three more years left on his guaranteed contract and, according to the NBA regulations, if he was to fail another team's physical, the Celtics would have to pay his entire remaining salary.

In the wake of his failed physical in Philadelphia and Rick Pitino's unwillingness to keep him on the Celtics' roster, Rađa returned to Europe in July 1997, joining Panathinaikos, a rich and ambitious club bankrolled by the Giannakopoulos brothers (Pavlos and Thanasis) who made their money in the pharmaceutical industry.

[28][29] The couple got married during late summer 1990 at Vatrogasni dom in Kaštel Sućurac right before Rađa's move to Rome to play for Virtus.

[30][31] By the mid-1990s, Rađa began a romantic involvement with singer and 1995 Miss Croatia runner-up Viktorija Đonlić, that eventually led to divorce from his wife.

[32] Rađa married Đonlić, ten years his junior, in August 2001 on a yacht anchored off the coast of Korčula with singer Petar Grašo as his best man.